Alan Stewart’s UK and Ireland family history news

Ancestry launches new parish pages

Ancestry.co.uk has introduced new web pages listing all its databases for England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, as well as those for each county.

Ancestry says: “Over the past year, we’ve added new collections from London, Yorkshire, Warwickshire, Dorset, Liverpool and Ireland to the millions of parish records already at our site. Our latest addition lets you search Dorset baptisms, marriages and burials going right back to the 16th century.

“We’re not stopping there either—we’ll be adding even more counties over the next 12 months. Our aim is to build the most comprehensive online archive of parish records, to help you trace your family’s births, marriages and deaths all the way to Tudor times.

“With so many records to wade through, it could become difficult to pinpoint the ones you’re looking for. That’s why we’ve come up with a new way to search our parish collections, making it easy to locate the records for your ancestors’ places and times. It all starts at our new parish page.

“Our parish page provides a complete map of the UK. If you want to learn more about parish records, scroll down to watch our introductory video. When you’re ready, simply select a region where your ancestors lived from the list on the left.

“On each region page, you can watch another video to learn about that area’s history and records. You’ll also see a list of all the local counties where we have parish records. Simply click on your county for more information.

“For many counties you’ll find details of our other records for that area, plus a timeline of the local history. Most importantly, though, you’ll see links to all our parish collections for that county, showing the types of record included and the dates they cover. Click one to start searching

“You can search for your ancestors by name, key dates, places and often other family members – depending on what’s included in the records. Just type in what you know and click ‘Search’, then see what turns up. Alternatively, you can see all our records for a particular parish using the ‘Browse this collection’ options.”